24 October 2012

At the 2011 FOSDEM (in February) the Fedora booth had an interesting attraction, there Jan had a mobile office (a laptop, a camera, a printer and a lamination device) and was busy producing Transnational Republic IDs, which many of us wanted, for the kicks (a funny anecdote: my ID was "good" only after the third try, small errors continued to appear, so he called me an "expensive customer"). I don't think I used the ID for anything so far.

Fast forward half a year, in August when going to FLOSSCamp we switched from the train to a bus in the city of Brașov and in the bus station I "lost" my walled (actually, it was a pickpocket who stole it) with national ID card, money, banking card and the transnational ID was there too. I was at the mercy of friends from the FLOSS community for the rest of the trip. But we managed it and the camp was fun.

Fast forward a year and a couple of months: I am called urgently at the local police station, the office for national IDs. I receive my lost transnational ID, it was found and, even if not recognizing its utility, they called me to return the lost item.

Now I am not sure what to do, applaud the police for returning my lost item or make fun of them for taking so long (~14 months). But surely I should applaud Jan, his product made some public administration workers do something and this is a success.